Tom Tancredo, America's Worst Congressman

Tom Tancredo, America's Worst Congressman

by

Paul Campos

America's worst congressman, Tom Tancredo, caused quite a stir recently when he aired a television ad for his presidential campaign. The ad features a man in a hooded sweatshirt detonating a backpack bomb in a shopping mall, then cuts to scenes of carnage from terrorist attacks in Europe.

"There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs," a voice intones. "Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, jihadists who froth with hate, here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia. The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill."

"I approve this message because someone needs to say it," Tancredo announces. You'll get no politically correct mealy-mouthed prevaricating from Tancredo. If you're looking for some good old-fashioned nativist fearmongering, he's your man, or more precisely your GOP presidential candidate.

It's worth emphasizing that Tancredo is not a racist nut exposing his paranoid delusions on some fringe Web site. He's a racist nut who has made his paranoid delusions the centerpiece of a bona fide Republican Party presidential campaign. (Actually I don't know if Tancredo himself is a racist, and the question holds no interest for me. Regarding immigration, he talks and acts exactly like a racist would and, when judging a politician, that's the only thing that matters).

And, with the exception of Mike Huckabee, all the first-tier Republican candidates are competing to sound just as "tough" on immigration as the decidedly second-tier Colorado member of Congress. (Don't be surprised if whoever wins the nomination runs ads very similar to Tancredo's next fall.)

A couple of ironies will leap out at anyone who isn't trembling at the thought of backpack-wielding jihadists disguised as hooded Mexican gangbangers blowing up Santa and his reindeer at the local Galleria during this busy holiday season.

The first is that by far the most successful terrorist movement in American political history was inspired by the same nativist and racist ideology that underlies Tancredo's radical immigration views.

I refer to the history of the post-Reconstruction South, where a decades-long terrorist campaign carried out by private citizens, often with the tacit support or active participation of local government and law enforcement, managed to undo much of what was accomplished during the Civil War and the years immediately afterward.

The post-Goldwater Republican Party, of course, has drawn much of its electoral strength from the resentment and rage the modern civil rights movement engendered when it conducted its own war on terror, and rolled back the legal aparthied the Southern terrorists and their sympathizers had imposed on African-Americans for nearly a century.

The second irony is captured nicely in a quote from a 1939 Life magazine story on Joe DiMaggio, brought to my attention by Matt Yglesias: "Although he learned Italian first, Joe, now 24, speaks English without an accent and is otherwise well-adapted to most U.S. mores. Instead of olive oil or smelly bear grease he keeps his hair slick with water. He never reeks of garlic and prefers chicken chow mein to spaghetti." The article includes a photo, captioned "Like Heavyweight Champion (Joe) Louis, DiMaggio is lazy, shy, and inarticulate."

Tancredo, whose grandparents were Italian immigrants, doesn't need to be reminded that, until fairly recently, Italian-Americans were considered only imperfectly "white," and indeed were credited with the same virtues (musicality, athleticism, passion) and vices (laziness, promiscuity, criminality) attributed traditionally to black people.

Now we've come so far that Rudy Giuliani, a philandering blowhard with lots of corrupt friends and a taste for authoritarianism, can be the leading contender for the Republican nomination, despite his unambiguously Italian name.

Further

Lord, what would John Lennon have made of the Trump monster? Marking Thursday's 36th anniversary of Lennon's murder, Yoko Ono posted a plea for gun control, calling his death "a hollowing experience" and pleading, "Together, let's bring back America, the green land of Peace." With so many seeking solace in these ugly times, mourns one fan, "Oh John, you really should be here." Lennon conceded then, and likely would now, "Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."